Super Easy Spider Snack

It doesn't get easier than this.

Ingredients:

• one Reese's peanut butter cup (we used dark chocolate, but any variety will do)
• a tiny bit of melted chocolate (I melted a few chocolate chips)
• four pretzel sticks broken in half to make eight spider legs
• two candies for eyes

Directions:

• Place the peanut butter cup upside down on a plate
• Melt your chocolate 
• Dip each pretzel stick half into chocolate and stick them to the sides of the peanut butter cup to make legs
• Dip the candies in the melted chocolate and stick them on top for eyes

If you are looking for a fun book featuring spiders, check out Aaaarrgghh! Spider! by Lydia Monks.

This book is hysterical.  A spider simply wants to become a family pet, but every time she tries to warm over the family, they scream and throw her outside.  This is a must read with fantastic illustrations and some very funny moments.  

Halloween Lunch - There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat

We love the different books based on There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.  Currently, we are having fun with the Halloween version featuring an old lady who swallowed a bat.  While I was grocery shopping (convenient timing!), the idea of making a special lunch based on the book popped into my head.

In the book by Lucille Colandro, the old lady swallows a bat, an owl, a cat, a ghost, a goblin, some bones, and a wizard.  Here is what I made:

• I used a bat cookie cutter to cut a bat out of bread and then spread Nutella chocolate hazelnut spread on the bat shaped bread.  The red eyes are icing.
• The owl is a piece of bread cut into an owl shape with peanut butter, white icing, chocolate chips, and a piece of candy corn on top.
• I do have a cat cookie cutter but decided to just serve cat whiskers (pretzels).
• The ghost was cut out of bread with a cookie cutter and the bread was topped with plain cream cheese and raisin features.
• The goblin is a spinach leaf with raisin eyes and a dried cherry mouth.
• I used my kitchen shears to cut a bone shape out of a marshmallow.
• For the wizard, I cut a star out of a piece of cheese and placed it on a pretzel stick to make a wand.

Halloween Cookies and Cream Muddy Buddies

I found a recipe for Cookies and Cream Muddy Buddies  at Chef in Training, and decided to use the Halloween Oreo cookies with orange filling to make them seasonal.  We also used Candiquick instead of almond bark.

First, we crushed twenty Oreo cookies.

Then, we measured six cups of Chex cereal into a large bowl.  We melted 12 ounces of Candiquick in the microwave and mixed it with the cereal until the cereal was coated.  Next, we added the Oreo cookie crumbs and mixed it all together.

Finally, we added 1/2 cup powdered sugar and stirred it into the snack mix.

One of our new favorite Halloween books is Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson.

This is a fun book about friendship and helping others.  The witch is flying through the night on her broom and keeps dropping things; every time she drops something, she stops to pick it up and also picks up a new passenger.  All of those passengers work together in the end to help the witch.  We love everything by Julia Donaldson, and were very grateful to Natalie from Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns for mentioning this book that is new to us!  I also recommend heading over to her site to find out what others are reading right now!

 

Graham Cracker Haunted Houses

We made edible haunted houses using graham crackers, chocolate frosting, ghost marshmallows, and Halloween sprinkles.  The kids had a lot of fun making these!

The frosting is Pillsbury Easy Frost chocolate frosting.  It was easy for the kids to use it to stick the graham crackers together and to stick decorations in place.

We finished the haunted fun by reading In the Haunted House by Eve Bunting.  This is a fun, slightly spooky (fun and silly, not scary) book about two children walking through a haunted house.

Another one of our favorite haunted house books is

Ten Timid Ghosts by Jennifer O'Connell.  It really is a fun read.  Ten timid ghosts live in a haunted house, but a witch moves in and wants them out.  She plays tricks to scare them away, but in the end, the ghosts play their own trick.  We love the rhymes and the countdown is a nice bonus.

Halloween Marshmallows

Two years ago (where does time go?) we had quite the stash of marshmallows for some reason and I decided to get creative with some of the huge campfire marshmallows left over from the summer.  We had so much fun with it, that I thought I would share some old pictures with you.

A Wilton food writer marker turned marshmallows into ghosts and mummies.

The kids and I melted some orange and green Wilton candy melts to cover a few marshmallows.

The green candy coated marshmallows became Frankenstein's monster with a little help from black icing, white frosting, and chocolate chips.

I think the cracked look makes him look just right.  It wasn't intentional!

I'm sure you can guess what became of the orange coated marshmallows....

our very own pumpkin patch!  

(The stems were created with green Betty Crocker cupcake icing - the kind you squirt out of the can.)

It seems like we were just talking about back to school stuff, and it's already time for Halloween fun!  Do your kids trick or treat?  What will they be dressed as this year?  We have a grim reaper (yikes), a spiderweb queen, and a ladybug, plus one teenager who stays home and hands out candy so that Mom and Dad can trick or treat with the kids for a bit.

What is your favorite Halloween book for kids?  We are big fans of Natasha Wing, and we like her book, The Night Before Halloween.

It has trick or treaters, spooky, but not too spooky, creatures, and a fun, rhyming Halloween twist on The Night Before Christmas.  Check it out and let me know what you think!  

Pirate Fun

We had so much fun with The Pirate Girl's Treasure, An Origami Adventure, by Peyton Leung and Hilary Leung.  The pirate girl heads out on a quest to claim the mysterious treasure left for her by her pirate grandfather.  She has quite the adventure full of obstacles like a mountain, lightning, a shark attack, and more.  The book is fun, but we loved that the last few pages include directions to retrace the steps of the pirate girl's adventure in origami.  

The book was perfect for our small celebration of  Talk Like a Pirate Day.

We didn't have a special snack this year, but way back in 2009, I made a pirate muffin tin lunch.  I have to do this again!  I feel like I was so much more creative then; I have been slacking.

Our muffin pan was transformed into a pirate ship. On the top left there is a pirate walking the plank (fruit leather), there are wooden legs (pretzels) in the top middle, and crackers for Polly in the top right. On the bottom left there is a Jolly Roger grilled cheese sandwich (I cut it freehand so it's not perfect), the bottom middle cup is filled with emeralds (peas), and the bottom right cup has rubies (strawberries) and sapphires (blueberries).

The Apple Pie Tree

The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall is a fun book that follows each season of an apple tree as it grows leaves, blossoms, and apples.  When the apples are ready to be picked, it is time to make an apple pie!

Instead of making apple pie, we made apple pie dip.  Oh my, this is SO good!  You can find the recipe on the Family Fun magazine website.  Click on that link now and get this recipe because you will want to serve this at your next party or social event.  Really, it's that good!

Of course you need something to be dipped into this deliciousness.  The recipe called for using tortillas, but we used a Pillsbury pie crust instead.  I just unrolled the crust, brushed on melted butter, sprinkled on cinnamon and sugar and then used our fall cookie cutters to cut shapes from the crust.  Then I baked them in a 350 degree oven for about ten minutes.